bus-power

WD 2TB My Passport review: The future is here

The WD My Passport, the first-ever 2TB portable drive WD introduced last week, turned out to be pretty impressive.

Despite the fact that it offers the top capacity for 2.5-inch-based drives that use the current perpendicular recording technology, the drive is also compact and light. In fact, it's more compact than the My Passport Studio that offers just half of its storage space.

Originally, it was predicted that for 2.5-inch internal drives -- those housed inside portable drives like the new My Passport -- to reach 2TB, a new recording technology would be required. WD's My … Read more

Elgato Thunderbolt SSD review: The crazy price of the magic

Bus-powered portable drives, those that don't need a separate power adapter to work, are not new and have been in the market for years. But the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is the first made specifically for Macs and for now can only work with Macs.

For this reason, like many thing Apple-made, it changes everything all over, again.

For one, it's by far the fastest bus-powered portable drive on the market, though not at all the fastest among Thunderbolt storage devices. Secondly, it's super-expensive at $700 for 240GB (or $450 for 120GB).

While souped-up pricing and performance of … Read more

Silicon Power Armor A80 review: Double A(lpha) male

Unlike most external drives I've seen, the Silicon Power Armor A80 portable hard drive uses A-male-to-A-male USB 3.0 cable.

This means the drive will not work with the more popular type of USB cable, which has an A male port on one end and a (Micro) B male port on the other. More than making up for this, the new drive offers alpha male performance all the way.… Read more

Thunderbolt storage now gets bus-powered with Elgato

LAS VEGAS--Mobile Mac users now can finally say goodbye to their USB or FireWire portable drives.

Elgato showed off today at CES 2012 the first bus-powered Thunderbolt drive, the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD.

While bus-powered--a feature that allows storage devices to draw power directly from the peripheral port, negating the need for a separate power adapter--has been widely popular with USB portable drives, it has been a challenge for the Thunderbolt connection. The Thunderbolt port is slated to offer up to 10 volts of power, but because parts and pieces of the Thunderbolt interface, such as the cable itself, require energy … Read more

LaCie debuts bus-powered eSATA external hard drive

LaCie announced Thursday the Rugged eSATA external hard drive. Though external hard drives with an eSATA connection are not new, this appears to be the first drive that comes with a Power eSATA interface. This means its eSATA cable is also capable of powering the device, making the drive more portable.

The Power eSATA interface, also known as a USB-eSATA combo interface, combines the high transfer speeds of the eSATA standard with the USB standard's capability to draw juice from the computer.

The USB-eSATA combo interface has a slightly different connector than the standard eSATA and, unfortunately, is only … Read more

WD's new external hard drives: More data that takes less space on the go

I recently reviewed the OWC Mercury and SimpleTech's Signature Mini external hard drives. I liked the OWC Mercury for its versatility in connections and its top-of-the-market storage space. I also loved the Signature Mini because of its light weight and compact, chocolaty design. On Wednesday, Western Digital (WD) joined this race of external hard drives that are so small in physical size, yet so large in storage space, with its My Passport Studio series. I now am a little confused and don't know yet how to feel about this one.

Weighing only 5 ounces, the My Passport Studio … Read more